Sad Marius
by Vest-Button
Summary: Several years after the book, Cosette is dead and Marius mourns. An attempt to explain that poem at the end.


Disclaimer: Not mine. I wish. It belongs to Victor Hugo. The thing at the end is the poem on Valjean's tomb, and that's at the end of the book. Yes, it belongs to M. Hugo.  
  
Um, a brief explanation: I have read the evil!Marius stuff out there, and it's good. However, for the intent of this story, Marius is okay. Now he's angst-ing (is that a word?) over the death of Cosette (who's also okay). He will suffer from his cruelty to Valjean, I promise you! Bwahahahaha!  
______________________________________ It was a cold winter night. Snow fell in the streets of Paris, icing the roofs and piling in the alleys. An eastern wind whipped through the labyrinthine corridors of buildings, cruelly chilling the unlucky gamin- child who had no home, or even elephant, in which to weather out the frozen night.  
  
All in all, it was a bad night to be out. Most people were at home, huddled around a fire, eating something hot. No-one who could at all avoid it was walking through the streets of Paris.  
  
But in the churchyard, a lone figure was walking. He flitted, like a shadow, or a specter, among the tombstones. His head was bent with grief, and his shoulders were hunched against both the storm and the tumult inside his soul.  
  
It was Marius, and he had been wandering through those graves ever since that morning.  
  
Cosette was dead. As much as he wanted to, he would never forget the moment the doctor had told him that. She'd been sick for a week or so, but it had seemed like a minor enough affliction: she had still been able to walk around the house with ease, and she had merrily knitted away the mornings. Then, suddenly, she collapsed over the sock she was finishing, and Marius sent for the doctor. Now she was dead.  
  
Her funeral was today. Marius wished he could forget the sound of dirt hitting the box that contained his wife, covering her forever. There was nothing he could do to bring her back, nothing he could have done to stop her from dying. Even if the doctor had come earlier, even if he, Marius, had sent for the man before Cosette had collapsed, could the good doctor have altered what happened? M. Pontmercy tormented himself with these questions, even though he knew that the facts would always remain: Cosette was dead. There was nothing anyone could do about it.  
  
He supposed he should probably be used to loss by now. Only a few decades ago he had lost all of his closest friends in a single night. Sitting down on the plinth of a large monument, he remembered them again. Courfeyrac, his best friend in the world, even now. L'Aigle, who had first noticed his wandering cab, and then offered to help. Enjolras, with his unfathomable glare, but also with his ever-open call to arms. R, the hapless drunk. Bahorel, the boisterous one. Jolllly, the doctor who inspired a distrust of modern medicine, at least in Marius' opinion. Combeferre, the philosopher, with that song. Eponine, who had showed him the house on Rue Plumet where Cosette had lived, and Jehan, who had taught Marius some poetic tricks that Marius himself had used in the "love poetry" that he'd written for Cosette.  
  
Even these memories were connected to his most recent loss. Cosette was gone. Cosette was gone. Cosette was gone. Over and over the words ran through his head. Cosette was gone. He was alone. Nothing could change anything.  
  
He had been lucky, though. Cosette had been with him for more than twenty years. They had been as happy as any two people had a right to be. The first smile he'd allowed himself in days crossed his face. Yes, those had been good times. He remembered the first time he'd seen her, as a young child at the Luxembourg. The year he'd spent dreaming of her, following her, and scrawling that infamous "love poetry". In those days, he'd thought her name was Ursula.  
  
He recalled those sweet days after their marriage, when she had been the center of his world, and he of hers. The days and weeks when they learned each other's little mannerisms, and adapted to them, so that soon they two worked together like the gears of a fine Swiss watch. Now she was gone, and he was one lone gear, spinning helplessly in space. The Swiss watch could no longer keep time, because one half of the mechanism was gone, lost forever in the grave.  
  
He remembered the days when he'd nearly died of his wound from the barricades. Then she had always been beside him, like a guardian angel, watching over him, talking to him, hoping that he would get better. Without her face there to bring him back from the edge, he doubted that he would have survived at all.  
  
Now she was gone. Now everyone was gone. In the poor section over there, his father had been buried so many years ago. Then there were the graves of all of his best friends, those revolutionary boys who had given there lives for a silly ideal. Beyond that was his grandfather's grave. Poor old Gillenormand had passed away ten years ago. There, also was the grave of his aunt, his cousin, and the child that had died but days after its birth. Several favorite servants were lay under the sod, in another corner. Now, his bride had joined them, all of them, and he was alone.  
  
Suddenly, Marius stopped. Unconsciously, his feet ahd taken him to this remote corner of the cemetery. He knew this place. Every year, Cosette had taken him to one special grave in the middle of it. There it was, the simple, unmarked grave of his father-in-law. A long slab of stone covered the tomb, but there were no markings on it.  
  
A stab of guilt hit Marius. Here lay another lonely man. Jean Valjean had rescued Marius from fire and death. Marius repaid him by stealing away the only thing that mattered in his life: Cosette. Valjean sickened and eventually died from that separation. Now it was Marius' turn to be without Cosette.  
  
He bowed his head in sorrow. This man had given him life, and more than life, and he'd grabbed for it, without another thought. Now that he knew what it was to have lost Cosette, he could not dream of taking her away from someone. Yet, he had done just that, and never looked back for a moment. He hated himself.  
  
Exhausted, Marius sat down on the stone slab. He'd been wandering through the churchyard ever since Cosette's funeral. He was tired and wet and cold and hungry, but to go back into the dry, warm, well-fed, populated world was something he could not do.  
  
Looking down at the stone, he let out a sigh. His life was empty. There was nothing left in it. Disease had snatched his last precious thing away from him, the same way that he'd snatched it from the man under the slab. He and Valjean had more in common than he had thought. When he first knew Valjean and his secret, he had felt nothing but horrer at being related to such a man. Now he felt sympathy for a fellow sufferer.  
  
Valjean had no friends or family. He had been pursued all of his life. He'd never been able to live in one place without fear. Despite all of these things, he became the life of an entire community. Yet he'd given all of this up. Finally, he'd found some stability and love in the form of an adopted daughter, only to have a young, pathetic* lawyer take her away.  
  
Valjean didn't even have an epitaph.  
  
Marius had a sudden urge to give him one.  
  
As he sat there, feet above his rescuer, fellow, and father, a piece of verse began to form in his mind. He'd never been as good as Prouvaire, but he occasionally did write passable verse, and he hoped this would be enough. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a lump of lead that he somehow had happened to have in his pocket. He then began to scribble, in the thin light of the dawn that was creeping over the horizon, these words, which a passing traveler observed later:  
  
Il dort. Quoique le sort fut pour lui bien etrange, Il vivant . . . ------------------------------------------------------------------------- *poofy-haired Yay! I wrote something!  
  
Please review. Please? Pretty please? Flames are welcome, but please no profanity! This is my first fic, after all! 


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